Alpine skiing Archives - Event Decor Supply

Posted on 19 February 2022 by admin

Beijing Olympics: High winds force events to be changed, postponed as Games near end

Organisers scrambled to reorganise the Alpine mixed team parallel race for the final day of the Beijing Olympics after high winds on Saturday forced the competition to be postponed.

Team officials and organisers agreed to hold the event, which is only its second edition, on Sunday at 9 a.m. (0100 GMT) despite several teams being scheduled to fly home.

The decision is likely to mean some teams have to rearrange their flights and accommodation bookings but it was not immediately clear if all would remain to compete.

Alpine team officials will hold their usual pre-race “captains’ meeting” at 5 p.m. when the start list will be agreed upon, and only then will it be clear how many of the 15 teams will remain in the rescheduled event.

Olympics and International Ski Federation (FIS) officials were keen to avoid the complications that would come with the rare case of an event not being held.

Juan Antonio Samaranch, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination commission for Beijing, told the IOC session that these issues were to be expected at a Winter Games.

“We had weather issues but this is Winter Games. We are coping with the difficulties still left but this is winter and we are here to celebrate exactly that: winter,” he said.

The closing ceremony for the Beijing Games is on Sunday at 8 p.m. The weather forecast for Sunday is for slightly better wind conditions earlier in the day.

On Saturday at 9 a.m., gusts were recorded as between 24 and 28 metres per second. On Sunday gusts are forecast between 19-22 m/s at that time.

The weather also disrupted competition at the National Cross-Country Centre in Zhangjiakou.

The men’s 50km cross-country mass start, one of the sport’s blue riband events, was postponed by an hour and shortened to 30km due to the high winds.

Not everybody in the field was happy with the decision.

“Of course athletes’ health comes first but we knew it was gonna be cold …. Look to other sports who moved their events a day earlier. This is not the way to go if we want to develop our sport!” Irish skier Thomas Maloney Westgaard tweeted.

The men’s freeski halfpipe final went ahead but gusts of wind kicked up snow and skiers lost momentum on the pipe, with several crashing, as temperatures dropped to minus 22 Celsius (minus 7.6 Fahrenheit).

“It was gnarly today. And there wasn’t even a discussion about postponing or waiting a little bit or anything,” British skier Gus Kenworthy said.

The women’s 12.5 km biathlon event, originally scheduled for Saturday, was brought forward to Friday due to weather concerns.

(Reporting by Simon Evans, additional reporting by Phil O’Connor, Shadia Nasralla and Simon Jennings; Editing by Peter Rutherford)

<br />

Posted on 17 February 2022 by admin

Mikaela Shiffrin Skids Out Again in Final Beijing Olympics Individual Event

YANQING, China—Mikaela Shiffrin skidded out of the the third of her five races at the Beijing Olympics on Thursday, the alpine combined, meaning the U.S. skiing superstar won’t win an individual medal at these Games.

Shiffrin passed the fifth gate—where she had skied out in the first two races at these Olympics, then had actual nightmares about it as she slept—but faltered a few gates later.

Posted on 9 February 2022 by admin

‘Skiing Out’ Explained: Why Mikaela Shiffrin Was Disqualified in Two Events

It’s been a difficult Winter Olympics thus far for Alpine skiing great Mikaela Shiffrin. The 26-year-old American has twice done something she hardly ever does in international competition: “ski out” of a race.

It’s a dreaded term for elite ski racers, one that is usually accompanied by the letters DNF – did not finish – meaning a skier failed to complete the course and register a valid run.

Making the gates

Alpine skiing courses are lined with brightly colored markers, called gates, which athletes must ski through as they navigate the slope. In the downhill, super-G and giant slalom disciplines, gates are marked by pairs of flags anchored to the snow by flexible plastic poles. Making contact with a flag is allowed, provided that every part of the skier’s body and equipment stays inside the inner-most pole.

Gates on a giant slalom course.

Getty Images

Slalom is a bit different. For starters, the gates are made up of single poles rather than larger flags. The poles, alternating in color, indicate various turns the skiers must perform down the hill.

Gates on a slalom course.

Getty Images

A common misconception is that the color of each pole indicates whether the skiers must go to the right or left of it. While this might often appear to be the case when watching a slalom competition, the color of each pole is simply meant to let the skiers know which gate is up next. It falls upon the athletes to learn the proper combination of turns outline by the course, which happens during set inspection periods in the hours or days before a race.

SEE MORE: Alpine Skiing 101: Competition format

What does it mean to ski out?

Simply put, skiing out means missing a gate at any point during a ski race. The consequences of doing so are instant disqualification from the event even if it spans multiple runs, as slalom, giant slalom and the combined event do at the Winter Olympics.

Sometimes, especially in the speed disciplines of downhill and super-G, ski outs happen when an athlete loses control and crashes off his or her skis. Shiffrin suffered a minor crash – and was uninjured – during her giant slalom run.

However, skiers can also ski out even without crashing if they stray too far outside the racing line, as Shiffrin did two days later in the slalom.